Squeers
"Marx's rubric for humanity was based on purely materialistic conditions, the means of production, and that it ultimately superseded all else."

True, and Marxists, Stalinists, feminists, supporters of Mao etc are rather a grim, joyless and boring lot, for all their destruction and harm to societies.

Ask a stupid question, get a stupid answer.

The best thing about Marxism is that I can easily ignore it, knowing full well that if I do, it will probably go away. But also, even if it doesn't, there's nothing that I can do about that. Kinda like religion.

All governmental types (and religions I guess) are experiments that will ultimately fail and be replaced by something else. The trick is to learn from the failure. Good luck to us all.

David f,.

I have already given my explanation for the corpses - Man's nature.

Was their ever a time when mankind wasn't capable of fashioning exquisite killing machines for any number of exigencies?
You've just listed a portion the U.S.'s woeful record in behaving precisely as its power allows it to....which you for some reason put to one side because you posit "there is no mystery concerning those deaths". Strange that you seem to exempt them from the human tragedy that unfolds wherever power is abused.

Power is often abused - and ideas are perverted to suit the aims of those in control. They are trussed together with abhorrent and willful acts of barbarity and ruthlessness, none of which detracts from the brutish nature of humankind when power and dominion are at stake.

"The question is whether the communist dictatorships since Marx were accurate renditions of Marx's thought."

No, the question is whether the communist dictatorships are logically necessary consequences of attempting to replace private with public ownership of the means of production.

Squeers is just trying to evade the obvious by spouting ideology, that's all. Can anyone really be so mendacious as to believe that the piles of corpses are just some kind of strange coincidence, because that's what Squeers is contending for?

Of course, Peter, the big fly in ointment as far as "ownership" is concerned was industrialisation.

Before its advent, the means of production was simultaneously privately owned - and in the hands of the common man.

In the industrialised world, "privately owned" means that capital resides in the hands of a few.
(Yes, I know you're going to reiterate that all the folk in pre-industrial Britain had one foot in the grave)

Just a thought. : )

Poirot

Before industrialisation we had feudalism. Not only was property not owned by the common man; the common man was often property himself.

On one thing at least I think Marx was right – industrialisation and the emergence of the bourgeoisie “rescued a considerable part of the population from the idiocy of rural life”